Within the next two weeks, almost everyone in Europe says goodbye to enter the summer vacations. You get the impression that people just want to leave everything behind and just enjoy a few weeks carefree and free of all problems. This is humanly very understandable, but of course only postpones without solving anything. This is quite human, but not helpful. More than ever, the market seems to be dividing again before the summer into the optimists and the pessimists with a very small section of the ‘plausibellists’. The optimists obviously assume that the usual recovery in demand and prices will set in after the summer. The pessimists see the large stocks of unsold goods along the supply chain and expect rather the opposite, and the ‘plausibellists’ take the pragmatic position, according to which it just goes on and on and for everything there is always some solution available. Everyone may look for his team accordingly. As far as general business is concerned, we have been in the typical pre-summer phase for many weeks now. The second quarter is always characterized by the fact that the contracts in the leather industry slowly expire, when they are preparing for the summer break and at the same time trying to make a good preparation and planning for the more active winter half-year. A difficult issue this year because we have to deal with conditions for which there is no historical template. That is probably why the division into the three groupings is more

pronounced than one is used to in normal years. Business in the current week was actually exactly as expected. There was little movement in Europe, apart from the routine business that still had to be discussed here and there before the summer vacations and, if necessary, concluded. However, in terms of volume, this was certainly not a large amount. There was more activity from Asia at the beginning of the week than we had actually expected. The problem, however, was the prices, because the bids received were up to 15% below the current asking and market prices. There was almost no room for negotiation, and therefore, at least for us, no major deals were concluded. The interest among the low grades was understandable, as obviously low-priced salted hides were wanted either just to fill the production or considered for the market of collagen. The inquiries for bull hides were then rather surprising despite the low prices and at the end of the week one wonders whether it might have been better to have been team of pessimists after all and accept the bids that were too low from today’s point of view. Time will tell and at the moment you can actually justify your decision only with the very low kill. So at the end of the week, the bottom line was not a particularly remarkable amount of sales, knowing that it could well have been much more. It remains with it also everyone free to make itself an opinion over the genuine price level. If we stick to the asking prices, then the level has not changed much, the same applies to the prices in Europe, but if we take the performance in Asia as a basis, then lower prices would be in the lists and reports.